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cover art for MX with David Whitcomb | E243

Fintech Impact

MX with David Whitcomb | E243

Ep. 243
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Jason Pereira talks to David Whitcomb, VP of Product at MX. It is an aggregator of aggregators in that it provides tech companies & traditional finance companies with a way of accessing a common data format across multiple different data aggregation companies & kind of pulls into data from all includes above and spits it up.


Episode Highlights

  • 1.00: MX not only connects with other aggregators, but the company also connects directly with some of the biggest things in North America for direct API access. 
  • 6.08: Once the data is refined and is in enhanced state, MX creates personal financial management tools out of it. 
  • 9.00: To the average consumer, they are starting to see if they haven't seen the new grading technology in MX which allows them to put the transactions from the bank account or their investment accounts into an app or into a dashboard or into some other places, says Jason. 
  • 10.15: MX has created a ton of intelligence around grabbing different data models, specifically around the council transactions. Normalizing the transactions, adding content to it around categorization classification of what the transaction is so that when a user of MX product or service gets the output of that account transaction we have, we've normalized all of it and have an often typically enhanced it so that it's more readable and more usable for whatever is being built, says David. 
  • 14.04: Everyone is getting into the payments world, which means a person is connecting their accounts at lots of different places and in many cases those connections then create a council of their own, says David. 
  • 25.02: With the shifts in the way payments are being made or with the shifts in the way consumers are engaging payments, we sell a lot of data that can enable our stuff. We are accessing account numbers, routing numbers to enable some of those use cases. We see that by ensuring that the data we have is leveraged in the right ways.


3 Key Points

  1. David and Jason discuss about data normalization. When data is received directly from the bank, VN, API, or via another aggregator, the data is in often different formats. It often has different values added into it or different parameters to that transaction; David explains how MX helps to simplify the entire process. 
  2. David shares how they use multiple layers of analysis. They have been using human intelligence in conjunction with computer analysis for the past decade.
  3. David explains what proprietary and competitive advantage is and what is the consumers data. 


Tweetable Quotes

  • "So historically, personal financial management has been what I would say is called financial literacy." - David
  • "I think a lot of people are finding themselves there, and with tools like MX offers, it allows you to centralize that stuff more quickly so that you can effectively manage." - David


Resources Mentioned


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